It is the adventure of being far away and still feeling at home....

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lunes, 22 de febrero de 2010

Argentinos meet Expats: Our last Intercultural Coffee Meeting in Palermo



From left to right: DJ (USA), Kirsty (Scotland), Kris (Argentina), Jim (USA), Ale (Argentina), Norman & Rita (USA) and myself!



Every week, a bunch of curious, open-minded Argentinos and Expats living in BA get together in a café to discuss on Porteños way and the challenges of being a foreigner in BA. Last week, the topic was Identity of Porteños.

We were supposed to meet on Friday evening. No matter how hard we tried, the heavy storm in BA and hundreds of liters of rain made it almost IMPOSSIBLE for us to leave our homes and workplaces! So we decided to meet up the following morning, Saturday February 20th. Drier.
The place? Just lovely! Café Lopez, a trendy bar in Scalabrini Ortiz and Güemes, in the heart of Palermo. Excellent coffee, and tall glass windows gave us a great view of the city.
The characters? Well, just amazing…  We were a group of people from different ages, backgrounds and walks of life, locals and expats. Being d-i-v-e-r-s-e is  exactly what makes the difference!
So you´re now wondering... what did we do?  To begin with, participants were asked to introduce themselves in a very “different” way, that led them to reveal funny sides of their personality.
Then, we did a fun learning activity to raise awareness on our (not always conscious) stereotypes and prejudices towards ourselves,  Porteños and other cultural groups. Understanding where our stereotypes come from and how they work was a key step of the Meeting!



Finally, I presented on the essential aspects of the Identity of Porteños from an intercultural perspective. This led participants to better understand what makes Porteños so passionate about tango, Psychoanalysis and soccer, among other cultural cues.
Having worked previously on the concept of stereotypes, the group was able to adopt an innovative perspective to respect and tolerate cultural differences in their approach to Porteños culture.


The result? 3 hours and several cappuchinos and "medialunas de manteca" later, we were still sharing our living abroad experiences, chatting and laughing.



Thanks everyone for coming! Hope to see you next Friday evening!

1 comentario:

Alejandro Tornato dijo...

Hello Naty,

Yes, I know it is "ME" once again. I have your blog in my Google Reader, so every time that there is a new post, I immediately receive it. Great what technology is able to do, I am amazed at the new gadgets especially with communication devices. The world "huge, magnificent and in some cases unreachable" as we once thought of it, is very rapidly becoming relatively small and very reachable, from one pole to the other.
Well, after this brief introduction, let me get back to the issue at hand, which is cultural issues and your coffee meetings in Buenos Aires.
I truly believed that what made this particular post very interesting was the actual photos of the participants. You know, Natalia, the famous saying "A picture is worth a thousand words", well, putting a face with the text made it very appealing indeed!!!
Certainly, this was an eclectic group, and you are very right in the fact that "Diversity" really makes the difference. Diversity in cultures, personalities, ideas, goals, passions, and I can go on and on.........Diversity is exactly what makes this world such a beautiful and unique place to live in and interact. You see, an example I can give is my personal love for very bright colors. My favorite one is blue, but bright and intense blue, and I very much like the combination of intense colors in various patterns. I enjoy being surrounded by colorful motives and designs because it brings a place to "Life". In the same way, being surrounded by a true diverse group of people makes me very happy, intrigued to find out more about each one of them, passionate to get immersed into their own cultures, and feel with them their own life's experiences. It really gives you a completely renewed and fresh outlook on life. It is extremely refreshing to connect with people at that level.
Thank you again, Naty for sharing with all of us, and allowing me again to express my thoughts.
Alejandro